


The Measure of a Man

by DameRuth



Series: Flowers [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien anatomy, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24666943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: In the Flowers!verse, Rose and Nine have an educational (more or less) discussion about anatomy and gender.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports - originally posted 2009.07.02. The last of the old Flowers stories to feature Nine, FWIW, so get ready for Ten from here on.]
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler, Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Flowers [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14017
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	The Measure of a Man

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone out there who's wondered, the following story contains and up-front (as it were) description of Flowers!Doc naked, though that may be less enlightening than could be hoped, I suppose . . . Lighter than the Flowers usual, but even in that 'Verse our heroes aren't solemn all the time. A little bunny that's been kicking around for a while now, finally coaxed from the underbrush following a conversation about Flower!Docs and Flower!Cocks, as it were (the two don't necessarily go together!). Thanks, as always, to Aibhinn for beta work and Bripicking!
> 
> Yes, AU!Time Lord!Anatomy is AU. One of the givens in this 'Verse, Three and UNIT and Four and Harry and Ten and Royal Hope and all that aside. ;)

“I have _never_ been that filthy,” Rose declared as she ran one of the TARDIS’s clean, white towels along her water-beaded arms.  
  
“Then you’ve led a very sheltered life,” the Doctor, toweling off next to her, replied absently. “About time you got out more.”  
  
Rose considered snapping his bare backside with her towel, but gave it up as a bad idea. Knowing him, he’d retaliate and escalate, and from everything she’d seen, he had very good aim. Instead, she changed complaint tactics.  
  
“You promised to show us the most beautiful temple in the known worlds . . .” she started.  
  
“And it was lovely, wasn’t it? Temple of the Seven Moons is one of the few Wonders of the Galaxy that deserves the hype, ‘f you ask me.”  
  
“Yeah, it was gorgeous. But it was also in _the middle of a swamp_. Being attacked by angry frog people, I might add.”  
  
“Good job we showed up when we did,” the Doctor commented (ducking the whole swamp issue entirely, Rose noticed). “By the time I convinced everyone they could share the same sacred site and it’d only please the gods more, not less, I’d say we put in a decent day’s work.”  
  
“One of these days I’d like a decent day’s work that didn’t involve running for our lives or getting plastered in swamp muck,” Rose said, not really meaning it.  
  
“Oh, so that explains why you were grinning like a loon through most of it,” the Doctor shot back, sounding not at all perturbed. He tossed aside the sodden towel he’d been using and grabbed another from the stack the TARDIS had supplied while the three of them were hosing off.  
  
Rose had never seen this large, communal bathroom before, but the TARDIS had placed it pointedly as the first room in the main corridor, and her muddy returning crew had been more than happy to take the hint. (In fact, Jack was still scrubbing off behind the glassed-in shower area, having elected to go through an entire second round of cleaning products.)  
  
Nearly a month’s worth, by Rose’s estimation, of the three of them sleeping bare-skinned together in various combinations made shared bathing seem more like a practicality than anything else, given the situation. Now, luxuriating in her renewed cleanliness, she was in no hurry to get clothed immediately, and she felt completely relaxed as she squeezed water from her hair. The Doctor seemed equally unconcerned as he stood facing Rose and buried his head in his fresh towel, rubbing it haphazardly over his face and scalp.  
  
While his attention was diverted and she could get away with it, she couldn’t resist shooting a curious, opportunistic glance at the part of him that wasn’t even remotely human; they might have been naked together frequently, but usually in dim light, and more often than not with bed coverings involved. She had a fair idea of what he looked like naked, but he was just so different, and complicated . . .  
  
"Questions?" The Doctor's tone was unusually mild, but it still made Rose jump as she realized she'd been caught.  
  
"Um," she said, and ran the towel over her already-dry face, to hide the flush that rose in her cheeks. "No, nothing." She peeked over the edge of her towel and saw the Doctor roll his eyes as he slung his towel across his shoulder.  
  
"Fine. My mistake. You only _looked_ like you were dying to ask something just then," the Doctor said, edging towards a more typically snarky tone.  
  
It was Rose's turn to roll her eyes. "All right, but don't jump down my throat, okay?"  
  
The Doctor raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms, waiting.  
  
"Are you . . ." she swallowed and gathered her courage. "Are you really male?"  
  
"What?" the Doctor yelped, in a tone of pure outrage. "Don't I look male?" He planted his hands on his hips and glared at her, his posture superficially aggressive, but Rose could read the hurt underneath it. _Well, his ego certainly seems male enough . . ._  
  
Given the invitation, she tossed her head, flipping her damp hair away from her face, and gave him the open, unashamed once- (and twice-) over. For the most part he did look very male by human standards: lean and muscular, but in a hard-working way, not a bodybuilder way; his body looked functional, rather than sculpted. His facial features were strong and masculine, and if he didn't sport a particularly large quantity of body hair, he wasn't abnormally smooth, either. The only place the perfect match with humanity failed was the Doctor's lower abdomen and groin.  
  
The thin line of hair running down the center of his belly faded just below his waistline, right above a symmetrical, flaring v-shaped pattern of raised, branching lines of flesh, the same color and texture as his nipples, that put Rose in mind of the veins in a leaf or a pair of butterfly's wings. The markings extended all the way up and out to the ridge of his hipbones, and beneath the surface of his skin were subtle bulges and valleys that hinted at complex structures underneath -- all the working parts were normally carried retracted, the Doctor had said. Even so, there was nothing that seemed to correspond to what Rose would have classified as man-bits. No balls, no cock, not even outlined under the skin.  
  
"Yeah," Rose allowed. "You look male. Mostly." She gave the latter word a dry twist.  
  
The Doctor snorted. "Just because I'm not an exhibitionist like our Captain doesn't mean much," he told her. "Even humans've been known to admit there's more to a man than what's dangling in his trousers."  
  
"Yeah, but for all I knew, on your planet, you could have done things in threes -- or fives, or sixes, or whatever," Rose pointed out, trying to sound reasonable. "You're always going on about how alien you are. Something that different-looking, how was I to know?"  
  
The Doctor's brows drew down, as if he was about to growl at her some more, but the sense in her words apparently made him relent.  
  
"Fair enough; I guess you wouldn't," he admitted, relaxing. Rose blinked, taken aback by her unexpected victory. "Thing is," the Doctor continued, "that sort of setup isn't very common, having more than two sexes. Makes everything too complicated. All you need for a proper genetic exchange is two, and simpler solutions tend to survive best over time. Most of the species around, it's only two different sexes, or just plain hermaphrodites. That's as easy as it gets, hermaphrodites."  
  
Rose thought about it, any residual embarrassment about the subject slipping away as she considered the abstract ideas. "Yeah, guess I can see what you mean. It's bad enough asking one person out on a date, much less five . . ."  
  
The Doctor laughed outright. "Yeah, and you should see how bad it gets with the mothers-in-law," he told her with that wide, almost triangular grin of his.  
  
Rose giggled helplessly, picturing five Jackie Tylers slapping one hapless Doctor at the same time. Catching her breath, she gave the Doctor one last head-to-toe consideration. Still grinning, he held out his arms, showing off.  
  
Thing was, when she just _looked_ at him, with no preconceptions, he seemed . . . right. Natural. Whole. Not like a human man with things missing. He was himself, and that was all there was to it.  
  
"Should I turn around?" he asked, teasing.  
  
"Nah, nothin' special about your bum," she told him, teasing back.  
  
"Oi!"  
  
"Didn't say it wasn't nice, just not special."  
  
"Ah, well, then," the Doctor said with a mollified shrug and turned to the (cleaned) clothing lying folded on the shelves next to the towels. He shook out a clean pair of black jeans, then held them up, frowning thoughtfully.  
  
"Mind you, while we're on the subject, I've never understood why a species built like yours would ever think zippers and men's trousers are a good combination," he commented.  
  
Rose, who'd thought the same thing herself more than once (not that she'd ever admitted it out loud to any of the blokes she knew) broke up completely at that, laughing so hard she could barely breathe. After a moment the Doctor joined in.  
  
\---  
  
Jack, finally having to admit he was clean enough, shut off the water in the shower. He wiped the worst of the water off his limbs with the side of his hand, then wrapped a towel around his waist, grabbed a second for his hair and stepped out into the tiled drying-and-dressing area of the bathroom. Rose and the Doctor, both still bare-skinned (though the Doctor had a pair of jeans in hand) were leaning conspiratorially against each other, heads together, snickering over one of their innumerable private jokes.  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Something funny?" he asked. He tossed aside the towel he'd been using on his hair, then untucked the one around his waist to finish drying off.  
  
The instant the second towel was gone from his waist, both Rose and the Doctor flicked a simultaneous glance straight at his crotch and began howling with laughter, leaning into each other for genuine support.  
  
Jack rolled his eyes. "Never mind," he said, tossing the second towel in the direction of the hamper and heading for the clothes he could see waiting on the shelves. "I really don't think I want to know this time."  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=31612>


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